Year of travel

I spent the morning reading and preparing a paper for China.

Than I checked my e-mail and read that I have been invited to spend 8 weeks in Ghana this summer. I've been staring at the wall for the last few minutes in a mixture of excitement and anxiety. I'm feeling a little flooded.

This opportunity is something that I have been thinking about since my first year of graduate school. I heard Dr. Karen Carr give a lecture on her work as a psychologist for missionaries and humanitarian aid workers living in West Africa. She and her team specialize in crisis response and are on call to travel of any of seventeen West African countries. Traumatic events such as evacuations, civil wars, kidnappings, carjackings, armed robbery, rape, theft, assaults, and severe medical illness are becoming an increasingly common experience for many workers in Africa. They also provide training seminars in interpersonal skills, consultation, and referrals.
For more info, go to www.mmct.org

Meeting Karen was exciting for me because she is an example of someone who practices an unconventional psychology. She does not work in an office, but goes directly to hurting people. She must adjust her psychological training to fit an non-Western context since she works with people from all over the world.

I love the idea of being an "emergency room" psychologist. The idea of meeting people where they are, in their moments of most acute need. This kind of work demands flexibility, energy, and courage to go into unknown situations.

The chance to do this in an international setting is amazing, both for my development as an international psychologist, and for me personally. I am overjoyed at the thought of returning to Ghana and once again feeling the huge African sun on my head, and walking with red-dust covered feet.

Rob is planning to join me for as long as he can get away. It is up in the air, but that has been our plan from the beginning.

This trip is different in that it is the first trip for which I will have to raise money (the cost of the China trip is entirely covered by my school). It will cost about $6000 for me, plus the cost of Rob going. I am not sure when I am going to have time to raise money. I hope some of you out there is blog world will consider whether you are able to donate to the trip.

Life as a finely woven fabric

As I have been preparing to go to China, I have been struck by the lyrical, illustrative language that permeates Chinese writing. It seems that Chinese do not say "I am sad" but instead convey sadness through an analogy, usually involving nature. One of my tasks is to give a presentation on an emotion-centered model of psychology. To do this well, I have to learn how emotions are expressed and thought about within Chinese culture. In my quest to get a sense of cultural language, I have come across some beautiful writing.


For example, the following is a view of history presented by a modern Chinese writer, Lu Xun:

Myriads of beautiful people and beautiful deeds weave
a heavenly tapestry, moving like tends of thousands of
flying stars, spreading far and wide, even to infinity-

Things and their reflections dissolve, flicker, expand
melt into each other, but then draw back, approaching
a semblance of their original selves. Their edges are
variable as those of summer clouds, shot through with
sunlight, emitting flames the color of mercury.

All things without exception mesh and interweave into
a fabric, ever lively, ever unfolding.


The optimism is striking to me. It seems that there is a determination to see life as beautiful, to see history as coherent and composed.

Encountering China's church

Yesterday I attended a small luncheon with the president of Fuller Seminary and the president of the China Christian Council. She visited Fuller with several of her colleagues and a watchful member of the Communist party.

The China Christian Council is an umbrella organization that serves all Protestant Christians in China. It aims "to unite all Chinese Christians who believe in the heavenly Father and who acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior" and "advocates mutual respect in matters of faith and worship". It is part of the Three-Self Patriotic Church, or the part of the Chinese church that the government acknowledges and accepts. According to rough estimates, there are more than 12,000 church buildings open for public worship in China, and new ones are being opened at a rate of three every two days. Additionally, some 25,000 groups of Protestant Christians are meeting in private homes.(www.amityfoundation.org/ANS/AboutCCC.htm)

Since 1980, more than 2,700 seminarians have completed their training at the 18 theological schools operated by the China Christian Council and regional/provincial Christian councils, and over 20 million Bibles have been printed and distributed within the country (www.amityfoundation.org/ANS/AboutCCC.htm).

The president of the organization is a petite elderly woman (yes, woman) who speaks with authority. She is one of the leading theologians in China and has a kind, gracious way of being. She is the matriarch of a nation's church. One of the members of her team told of what it felt like to watch her church re-open in 1980 after the cultural revolution ended. During the cultural revolution all forms of religion were banned. Churches were locked or destroyed, many Christians hid their beliefs. Now there is religious tolerance and even a state-sponsored (monitored) church. Chinese Christians have been through a tremendously difficult history.

It was interesting to meet an official communist. The representative (yes, also a woman) was friendly and seemed to be a genuinely accepted part of the delegation. I am curious about how she came to go on the trip - was she sent? was she invited?

China

I am off again.

Several weeks ago I was invited to join two Fuller professors and one other student on a delegation to China. I will leave on March 10 and return on March 26. Fuller is committed to developing a formal partnership with a Chinese seminary. For various reasons, the School of Psychology is the first part of Fuller to send delegations to China. We are planning to collaborate with mental health professionals and Chinese Christians to address mental health needs and to help develop an indigenous model of Chinese psychology and pastoral counseling. I expressed interest in a trip that went last summer and was very disappointed to not be selected. The invitation to participate in this trip was an unexpected, very exciting honor.

This is a working trip. We have a packed schedule of presentations, meetings, discussions, and consulting. I am going as a professional, not a tourist. I feel a little bit of anxiety about this. I am in the middle of a busy academic quarter and working very hard on my dissertation. I am struggling to find the time to work on the presentations I am giving, read-up on relevant literature and generally prepare to go to China as a "professional". There is so much to do! I try to console myself by telling myself that I know more than I think I do (but I think I am lying).

We are going as professionals, but we are also going to learn. The more I travel, the more I am aware of how much American culture can gain from listening to the wisdom of other cultures. China's communal approach to life is radically different than ours. A Chinese approach to mental health is community based, it does not focus on one individual, but thinks about the well-being of an entire group. I hope to learn to think more like this.